The Age Of Invention

We've hit Day 9 in the A-Z today, so let's get to it...

I is for (re) Invention

Not gonna lie...I was feeling a little bit stuck today, not only with this letter, but also with my theme. So many of the words I want to write about overlap in terms of content, and I don't want these posts to be the same thing said twenty-six different ways. 

I was thinking I might do some sort of all about me (all about I) write-up for this letter, but that stalled too. My daughter came into the room while I sat frozen at the keyboard, and I asked her to tell me something about myself that I might not have talked about here, and she said, 'you developed a love of adventure later in life'.

Hmmm. Do I love adventure? 

I said I think the word is overused and also I've decided I'm actually not someone who loves adventure.  That currently there is no great big thing I feel inspired to see-do-accomplish, and she said that's because I've spent the past twenty years seeing-doing-accomplishing, and now I'm living a more settled life and I haven't quite figured out how to do that, or even how a quiet life should look. 

She reminded me we never really put down roots. We squatted with tent pegs, embraced people and places and experiences for a year or two or six, then yanked up those pegs and set up camp somewhere new. 

There was always something new. 

And now we are settled. We have roots taking hold, and I'm once again feeling the need to re-invent myself for the season I'm in. 

Like every season I've walked through, but this one looks more, for lack of a better word, ordinary. My kids are launched. In fact, they're more than launched. They're college graduates, married women, mothers of little ones living their own adventure. 

When I told my daughter I thought the word was overused she said, 'well I think romanticizing the little things we do to make a house a home, to make motherhood feel less mundane, to make the ordinary feel special is a good thing.' 

She's right. Call the life you're living an adventure and an adventure it will be.  

You don't have to paddle down the Amazon or bungee jump the New River Gorge to call something an adventure. There's more than one way to define the word. More than one way to see your world. 

So here I am living my own little adventure. 

Figuring out what to do with my days and my daydreams in life's third act.

'...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you...' 1 Thessalonians 4:11